Do we like them?

Do we like Maria Alyokhina?

Our score: 9 out of 10. Years of protest at personal cost, and no harmful words or company turned up, but the record I could open is thinner than I'd like.

Maria Alyokhina is a founding member of Pussy Riot, the Russian protest collective that went global after its 2012 "Punk Prayer" in a Moscow cathedral. Her protest against Vladimir Putin's government led to a two-year jail term, and she has been targeted by the Russian state ever since. That is the backbone of her story.

In 2022 she got out of Russia disguised as a food courier, which sounds like a movie plot but was reported by major outlets including CNN affiliates and the Boston Globe. She then joined a European tour to raise money for Ukraine, with the group saying it condemned Putin's war and wanted to help those who suffer from it.

The Russian state has kept coming after her. In September 2025 a Moscow court sentenced her in absentia over anti-war performances, reportedly the longest term of the five Pussy Riot members sentenced in that case. The defendants rejected the charges and called the case politically motivated.

In December 2025 a Moscow court also declared Pussy Riot an extremist organisation, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe. That is a Kremlin label on an anti-war group, not a finding about anything harmful she has done.

On the harm test, I found nothing: no slide into conspiracy theories, no attacks on trans or LGBTQ+ people, no dodgy company. Gap to be honest about: the sites that carry her interviews wouldn't open for me in this session, so that is a clean search, not a full audit of everything she has said.

The good stuff is the stuff most of us would run a mile from: she keeps putting her safety on the line for free speech and against a war. She also turned the prison years into a book, Riot Days, with a follow-up, Political Girl, due out in more markets this year.